The present application relates to the field of data processing and, more specifically, to a method, apparatus, and related computer program product for creating a service mashup instance based on a user's exploration procedure.
With the development of computer technology, the World Wide Web has increasingly become a programmable platform where users may combine various Web-based, lightweight Web services (such as a widget, feed, and RESTful API) provided via the Internet, in order to form service combinations that are customized according to the users' own demands. A Web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Web services are usually composed of application programming interfaces (APIs) that execute, through a network, service requests as submitted by clients.
As Web services become increasingly diversified and users' self-service awareness increases, users may no longer be satisfied with stereotyped services provided to the public by various Web service providers. Instead, users may want to select a number of desired services from the myriad of services provided by respective Web service providers and further have the option to combine selected services into a single application instance according to their own desires. For example, a user may desire to combine “book services” (e.g., GOOGLE BOOK®, AMAZON BOOK®, and DOUBAN BOOK®) provided by different service providers into one application instance, so as to quickly obtain prices, comments, or other related information regarding a certain book. For another example, stock investors may wish to simultaneously view, in one application instance, timeline information, stock prices, or enterprise information related to stocks that the user may have purchased where this information is available from different service providers.
A technique named “mashup” is a popular method for combining various desired services into one instance. The “mashup” refers to a network application mode in which a plurality of material sources or functions on a network are integrated to realize new services.
Commonly seen mashups usually acquire materials or functions from desired websites for the mashups such as books, maps, news, among others. These services may be provided by companies such as GOOGLE®, DOUBAN®, AMAZON®, EBAY®, YAHOO®, among others, by means of a set of open application programming interfaces. Service mashup instances are created by using existing mashup tools.